Stephen Pittman says he doesn’t necessarily want to sell scandalous costumes, but he will if he has to.
Pittman, 56, has lived in Long Beach for three decades and has seen plenty of costume fads come and go. He and his wife Jean have owned and operated Party Props on Second Street for the past 15 years.
“People don’t want to buy scary masks anymore,” Pittman says while wearing an Air Force cap. “But that’s what I’m missing: the Draculas, the Wolfmans … I haven’t had one person come in who wanted to be Frankenstein this year.”
The fall of the traditionally scary costume is evident in the store’s layout. Practically the entire east wall is covered with packaged costumes featuring high skirts and bust-accentuating tops, while scary masks and wigs are perched high up and out of arm’s reach on the west wall.
“Dorothy didn’t look like this,” Pittman says, pointing to the packaging of a racy costume loosely-based on the “Wizard of Oz” character. But that, he says, is what happens when society consider people like Britney Spears a role model.
Racy or not, Pittman, who is originally from upstate New York, takes pride in the quality products and customer service he says his store, which is part of the National Costumers Association, provides.
He doesn’t hire just anybody who walks in off the street.
“You gotta know the difference between Medieval and Renaissance … ’60s and ’70s.”
He makes sure to have a few younger people, like 22-year-old Jamie Fisher, on staff to keep a finger on the pulse of youth culture.
Fisher is suggesting that people dressing up as Spears this year invest in a fake baby to clutch at Halloween parties.
Just a few days ago, Pittman says, a customer came in looking for a Rainbow Brite costume. She had been to one of the temporary costume stores, like the one currently situated next to Sears in the Los Altos Market Center, but the closest thing she found there was a Raggedy Ann costume.
Pittman tells this story, which ends with him quickly directing the young lady to the exact costume she was looking for, as if she had bought a coat made of rats while in search for a mink.
He says that, although there is nothing wrong with the temporary stores, they sell costumes that are over-priced when considering the quality.
Pittman says his costume packages range usually from $39 to $100, but are of high quality.
What’s really impressive about his store, which is wedged between Rite Aid and Universal Jewelers, is the long, narrow backroom filled with, according to Pittman, at least 4,000 high-quality costumes.
The packed and stacked rows of costumes catalogue years of popular culture. Elvis get-ups, the purple coats of Austin Powers and Prince, peach-colored suits like those worn in “Dumb and Dumber,” and an extravagant robe fashioned after that worned by Donnie Osmond are all either hung up or stuffed into dozens of cardboard boxes.
Pittman says he usally charges between $80 and $125 for use of the high-end rentals.
Pittman says the most popular costumes are almost always based off the year’s biggest blockbusters, and recounts 1997’s surge of demand for “Titanic”-based costumes with a hint of disblief.
This year, he’s made sure to stock up on plenty of costumes with “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “300” themes. But reality-TV stars like Hulk Hogan and Dog the Bounty Hunter have also been popular this season.
“The only thing we wanna carry is a very good product,” Pittman says, even if that means selling costumes with a greater influence from Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan than Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff.
Party Props is located at 5114 E. Second St.
